Elizabeth Warren Speech

December 12, 2014

Mr. President, I’m back on the floor to talk about a dangerous provision that was slipped into a must-pass spending bill at the last minute, solely to benefit Wall Street. This provision would repeal a rule called, and I’m going to quote the title of the rule: “Prohibition against federal government bailouts of swaps entities.”

On Wednesday, I came to the floor and asked Democrats to strip this provision out of the Omnibus bill and protect taxpayers.

On Thursday, I came to the floor to talk to Republicans. Republicans say they don’t like bailouts either. So I asked them to vote the way they talk. If they don’t like bailouts, then they can take out this provision that puts taxpayers on right back on the hook for bailing out big banks.

Today I come to the floor, not to talk about Democrats or Republicans, but to talk about a third group that also wields tremendous power in Washington.

Citigroup.

Mr. President, in recent years many Wall Street institutions have exerted extraordinary influence in Washington’s corridors of power.

Citigroup has risen above the others. Its grip over economic policy making in the executive branch is unprecedented.

Consider just a few examples. Three of the last four Treasury secretaries under Democratic presidents have had close Citigroup ties. The forth was offered the CEO position at Citigroup, but turned it down.

The vice chair of the Federal Reserve System is a Citigroup alum. The undersecretary for international affairs at Treasury is a Citigroup alum.

The U.S. trade representative, and the person nominated to be his deputy, who is currently an assistant secretary of Treasuary, are Citigroup alums.

A recent chairman of the National Economic Council at the White House was a Citigroup alum.

Another recent chairman of the Office of Management and Budget went to Citigroup immediately after leaving the White House.

And another recent chairman of the Office of Management and Budget is also a Citi alum, but I’m double counting here because he’s now the secretary of Treasury.

Not that’s a lot of powerful people, all from one bank. But they aren’t the only way that Citigroup exercises power. Over the year, the company has spent millions of dollars on lobbying Congress and funding the political campaigns of its friends in the House and Senate.

Citigroup has also spent millions in trying to influence the political process in ways that are far more subtle and hidden from public view.

Last year I wrote Citigroup and other banks, asking them to disclose the amount of shareholder money that they have been diverting to think tanks to influence public policy.

Citigroup’s response to my letter: Stonewalling.

A year has gone by and Citigroup didn’t even acknowledge receiving my letter.

Citigroup has a lot of money, it spends a lot of money, and it uses that money to grown and consolidate power.

And it pays off.

Consider a couple of facts.

Fact One: During the financial crisis, when all the support, through Tarp and the FDIC is added up, Citi received nearly half a trillion dollars in bailouts. That’s half a trillion, with a “T.”

That’s almost $140 billion dollars more than the next biggest bank got.

Fact Two. During Dodd-Frank there was an amendment introduced by my colleagues Senator [Sherrod] Brown and Senator [Ted] Kauffman that would have broken up Citigroup and the other largest banks.

Now that amendment had bipartisan support, and it might have passed, but it ran into powerful opposition from an alliance between Wall Streeters on Wall Street and Wall Streeters who held powerful government jobs.

They teamed up and they blocked the move to break up the big banks. And now Citi is larger than ever.

The role that senior officials from the Treasury played in killing the amendment wasn’t subtle.

A senior Treasury official acknowledged it at the time, in a background interview with “New York Magazine.” The official from Treasury said, and I’m going to quote him: “If we’d been for it, it probably would have happened. But we weren’t, so it didn’t.” That’s power.

Mr. President. Democrats don’t like Wall Street bailouts. Republicans don’t like Wall Street bailouts. The American people are disgusted by Wall Street Bailouts.

And yet here we are, five years after Dodd-Frank, with Congress on the verge of ramming through a provision that would do nothing for the middle class, do nothing for community banks, do nothing but raise the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks once again.

You know, there’s a lot of talk lately about how Dodd Frank isn’t perfect. There’s a lot of talk coming from Citigroup about how Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect.

So let me say this to anyone who is listening at Citi. I agree with you Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect. It should have broken you into pieces.

If this Congress is going open up Dodd-Frank in the months ahead, then let’s open it up to get tougher, not to create more bailout opportunities. If we’re going to open up Dodd-Frank, let’s open it up so that once and for all we end too big to fail. And I mean really end it, not just say that we did.

Instead of passing new laws that create new bailout opportunities for too-big-to-fail banks, let’s pass Brown-Kauffman. Let’s pass the bipartisan twenty-first century Glass Steagall Act, a bill I proposed with John McCain, with Angus King and Maria Cantwell. Let’s pass something, anything, that would help break up these giant banks.

A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt was America’s Trust Buster. He went after the giant trusts and monopolies in the country, and a lot of people talk about how those trusts deserved to be broken up because they had too much economic power.

But Teddy Roosevelt said we should break them up because they had too much political power. Teddy Roosevelt said break them up because all that concentrated power threatens the very foundations of our democratic system.

And now, we’re watching as Congress passes yet another provision that was written by lobbyists for the biggest recipient of bailout money in the history of this country. And its attached to a bill that needs to pass or else the entire federal government will grind to a halt.

Think about that kind of power. If a financial institution has become so bring and so powerful that it can hold an entire country hostage, that alone is reason enough to break them up.

Enough is enough.

Enough is enough with Wall Street insiders getting key position after key position, and the kind of cronyism that we have seen in the executive branch.

Enough is enough with Citigroup passing an eleventh-hour deregulatory provision that nobody takes ownership over, but everybody will come to regret.

Enough is enough.

Washington already works really well for the billionaires and the big corporations and the lawyers and the lobbyists.

But what about the families, who lost their homes or their jobs their retirement savings, the last time Citi bet big on derivatives and lost.

What about the families who are living from paycheck to paycheck and saw their tax dollars go to bail out Citi just six years ago.

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